


Uncertain Conviction

by sabaceanbabe



Category: Dollhouse
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-02
Updated: 2010-06-02
Packaged: 2017-10-09 21:29:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/91802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sabaceanbabe/pseuds/sabaceanbabe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>The words danced around each other with the weight of religious ritual.</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	Uncertain Conviction

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for [](http://community.livejournal.com/dollhousefics/profile)[**dollhousefics**](http://community.livejournal.com/dollhousefics/) challenge 2: Trust. No betas were harmed in the writing of this fic.

_"Did I fall asleep?"_

_"For a little while."_

The words – hers, his – would not leave his brain, danced around each other with the weight of religious ritual. He knew when he took Echo's hand in his, lightly ran the ball of his thumb over her scraped knuckles, the action was something Brink would never understand. The man understood that the power of touch enhanced the bonding process between handler and active, yes, but a true understanding of that power was far beyond his reach.

Echo's hand was so much smaller than Boyd's, pale and delicate, but far more capable than he would have thought just a few months ago. The look in her eyes when she asked him that question, filled with equal amounts of uncertainty and a complete and utter conviction that he would tell her the truth, that she could trust him and anything he said to her, tore at him.

This place and everything in it was fundamentally wrong. The poor, trusting children who lived here, innocent and fragile and yet so ripe with deadly potential, were just this side of abomination. Boyd Langdon wanted to walk away. The things he'd seen… He didn't even know anymore why he'd thought working for these people would be a good thing, but he couldn't just walk away. Not so long as Echo put such trust in him. The fact that trust was a construct didn't make it any less real. Not to her. Not to him.

She squeezed his hand, subtle pressure, there and gone so quickly he might have imagined it. Just as the flicker of light in her eyes, the faintest spark of something that shouldn't be there, might have also been his imagination.

Boyd thought of Claire Saunders, her quiet beauty marred by horrific scars. Scars that he'd seen raw and new, before they'd had a chance to heal. Scars created by a monster who lived in a package very much like his girl here. And those were only the scars that he could see.

Echo trusted him completely, but could he ever truly trust her?


End file.
